Deirdre Barrett - What's the Essence of Consciousness?

Consciousness is what mental activity feels like, the private inner experience of sensation, thought and emotion. Watching a dramatic movie. Imagining your family’s future. Attending the funeral of a loved one. Consciousness is like nothing else. But what is consciousness, the essence of consciousness, at its most fundamental level?

Deirdre Barrett, PhD is an author and psychologist and teaches at Harvard Medical School. She is known for her research on dreams, hypnosis, and imagery and has written on evolutionary psychology.

Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[browngreen]

I occasionally lucid dream. Years ago I used to dream fly. Sometimes I have to fight off threatening figures above my bed. I wake up fending them off. Scary. Reoccurring dreams about no place to live and having to find a job haunt me. I wake realizing I own my home and have a nice nest egg. Feelings of palpable relief.

[photographyandthecreativeyou]

I often dream I'm walking along and I come upon a step I didn't see! You can wake up fast with that one.

[TheTroofSayer]

I've been increasingly entertaining the possibility that dreams are manifestations of the nonlocal of self. There are learned precedents to explore this, starting with CG Jung & the collective unconscious. Analysing dreams from the semiotic perspective lends further support for this conjecture. When I dream, I often get the impression that I am seeing and experiencing a world through another self's eyes, in some other alien culture. The garbled, dynamic sense of the dream, the way that spoken & written language issues play out, etc, are manifestations of the semiotic aspects of my experiences engaging with those of the self with which I am entangled. The nonlocal self has huge implications - for example, reincarnation.

[rc]

7:45 some people have been able to bring something back from their dreams, mostly in the form of ideas/concepts 🤔

[Dion_Mustard]

I've had 2 OBEs and various lucid dreams. From these experiences my understanding is that consciousness is MORE than brain and there are different levels of existence / realities out there which we cannot perceive with out 5 senses. When we dream our minds/consciousness are more FREE and FLUID. Consciousness becomes non-local, so to speak. I witnessed things separate from my body which I could later verify as accurate so I know 10, 000% that consciousness leaks out of the brain.

[ronhudson]

I often dream that I am trying to get home and the harder it gets the less sure I am about where home is. I often come to the realization that I don’t live in Montreal anymore, having moved years ago to Toronto. I also occasionally lucid-dream and when I do it is a profound experience.

[sort_to_see_hidden_comments]

I like this channel the most, although it mostly obsessed with certain topics, nothing important if we are all going to die soon, so we must understand what is going to happen to us when we die. and way after we die.

[profskmehta]

This discussion is about the activities of various part of the brain. The definition of consciousness or it relation with the brain is completely missing. Once again zero success in understanding consciousness.

[ronaldkemp]

I had a dream I went to see my doctor but he was a young guy, with brown hair. I never saw the guy before. He sat at his desk and told me it's a miracle, your cancer is gone. You're in complete remission. The dream was vivid colors and emotions. I awoke and remembered it like it had already happened before. But I didn't have cancer. So I put it in the back of my mind as weird. Then about 2 months later my doctor told me I needed to get the lump on my head removed and checked to see if it was malignant. He scheduled me to see a surgeon and have it removed. After the lump was removed the surgeon scheduled me back for a follow up. She told me the tumor was cancerous and then scheduled me to see an oncologist. I kept thinking about the dream I had of a doctor telling me my cancer was gone. The dream gave me hope. The surgeon then because I was still happy about the ordeal wanted to know if I needed to be alone to collect myself. I was fine. Deep down inside I knew I would be fine. The oncologist wanted me to go through invasive chemo and radiation treatments for al least 4 week straight and then go from there. I laughed and kindly refused. He tried to convince me to go through the barbaric treatment and I declined. He spoke to my wife, trying to get her to convince me, telling her I was at stage 4 and that people don't have long to live after that. I still refused and told my wife about the dream.

Well, I began taking a dietary supplement because the cancer was getting worse, I could barely walk and I was in so much pain. Two months later I went back to my doctor for bloodwork to check on the progress of my cancer. Right before I could schedule another appointment to go over the test results the pandemic hit and my state closed down. I wasn't allowed to see my doctor till the all clear was given. When I got into the office I discovered my doctor had sold his practice to another doctor and his brother. He was the same guy in my dream. I hadn't met him before that office visit. He pulled out his laptop and pulled up my records and started reviewing my bloodwork. He said, there are no traces of the cancer in your blood. Then he got up and asked me to lift up my shirt so he could examine my skin. My old doctor seen all the tumors that were growing all over my body, head, neck, shoulders, arms, sides, back and chest. He looked me over and said, looks like you're in complete remission. My dream played out to the tee, well except he never said it was a miracle.

I told my wife and children about the dream the same day the surgeon told me I had cancer. I told them not to worry. I told them I would beat the cancer because I had that dream. Sure enough, even after my last office visit, I'm still in complete remission.

How was I able to see a future event if it hadn't happened yet? I still can't wrap my mind around it. How can effect come before cause? It just doesn't make any sense. sound like quantum entanglement. The only way it would be possible is if this reality isn't real but a memory of what had already happened and I'm experiencing it again. Spooky, I know, way too deep or off the deep end. But, it's true.

[georgegrubbs]

The concept of "consciousness" needs to be well-defined by the pertinent science community. Lack of definition has caused much confusion and this video discussion is a case in point. That is, are we "conscious" when we dream, or "conscious" only in certain kind of dreams, or "conscious" only when we are awake? What is "consciousness."

"Consciousness" and "conscious" are terms that describe entities (currently, living biological organisms such as humans) that display defined properties. Confusingly, these properties vary among scientists.

Some properties are: awake, alert, aware of surroundings, aware of self, experience subjective life, that is, self-reflection, thinking, qualia (subjective feelings and experiences), imagination, and so forth. Some experts in the field of consciousness studies only use a subset of those properties to define "consciousness"; others use the entire set and even more. Some experts allow conscousness to be present with sleeping as we've seen in the video (lucid dreams) and even other types of dreams.

So, the question must be asked at the outset of any conversation about consciousness, "What do you mean by "consciousness"?"

What we're talking about are types and extent of neural activity - that is brain activity.

The field of consciousness studies sorely needs an official, widely-acccept definition of "consciousness." Otherwise, confusion will continue.

[observer]

consciousness appears in waking, dreaming and non dreaming state of mind as per Vedic literature UPANISHAD from ancient India

[bittertruth]

What's the Essence of Consciousness?
Who's asking this question? Is it the consciousness of the questioner??

[mariannelindsell]

What a fascinating discussion. I could listen to even more of this.
May I offer a recent 'discovery' I have made about (my) dreams. Any objects that appear in dreams only exist in the dream for as long as you have them to hand.
If you put them down or move beyond them in some way, they cease to exist (in the dream).
I first noticed this when I was looking for something that I expected to easily find, in a dream. I of course couldn't find it.
I later found that this was repeatable across many dreams; let something go and can never find it again.
I even found the principle seems to operate more widely than just looking for something you have put to one side, though I can't recall the specific example that led me to that conclusion.

Overall, I am fascinated by the prospect of learning more about consciousness, by studying dreams.
And your discussion has also made me start wondering about we actually mean by 'states' of consciousness.
'Major Modes' of the mind perhaps, but of which parts or faculties of the mind?

Thank you again for a fascinating discussion.

I am a keen fan of your channel.

[Novastar.SaberCombat]

Consciousness is often beautiful, unbearable, boring, uncertain, frightening, meaningless, and completely, utterly random more often than not. Frankly, having consciousness on EARTH is driving me nuts, and I'd actually prefer to be ASLEEP more often than awake, lol! 😂🤣😂

[jeremymr]

Last year I had a lucid dream in which I kissed a woman on the lips and literally felt the sensation in the dream! The woman was someone I had dated in real life years ago and we had kissed, but ended up breaking up before a relationship really got started. In the dream, the kiss felt like what I remember the kiss with her feeling like in real life. It's so strange to me that in a dream my brain/consciousness can allow me to literally re-experience and physically feel a kiss but in waking life that's impossible and I can only ever remember what it was like, not experience it again.

[EricAllen]

Had a lucid dream, hugged a dead relative and could smell their perfume

[pinchopaxtonsgreatestminds]

I don't agree with most of the dream analysis used in this video. For example 1:30 we can have full conversations in dreams. Last night I dreamed I had a new camera the day before, and I was testing it out by photographing a red bricked house. The camera was shaking a bit, and the house was slightly blurred. I showed my girlfriend with me, she said "it's a bit blurred." I replied, "Yes I zoomed out a lot, and it's hard to hold the camera steady when you zoom out so far." I took another picture without zooming, and said "Look this is without zoom, it's dead sharp!" She said "You are wasting all the film." It was at that point I realised that this was in fact a slide I was holding. I said "These are slides you can project them." Then I noticed that there was a different picture on the back of the slide "Hey there's a boat with blue sails on the other side." I said. She said "That was yesterday on that boat trip!" Then I remembered taking pictures all day yesterday. She said "Hey that reminds me, you were on the news! The police want to talk to you." I said "I didn't do anything wrong yesterday." She said "There was a crime committed yesterday, and they want to talk to the guy with two cameras as he may have photographed the crime taking place." I said "I didn't see a crime taking place" She said "The crime can be in the background of one of the photo's." Then I was just thinking about looking through the photos for the crime.

So that is quite a detailed conversation... hardly silent.

[bretnetherton]

Awareness is the ONLY constant of ALL experience what could be more fundamental to reality than that?

[HENRYIII]

B vitamins will boost colors and lucidity in dreams, but like psychedelics, your tolerance will build quickly so to maximize effects you should avoid them for a week or three then take a heroic dose, which you can find in one or two b-complex vitamin pills or one or two energy drinks. As a rough rule of thumb, or a sanity check to stop you from exponential dosing, psychedelics require a doubling of the dosage to get the same effect the next day, which is impossible to maintain, but you could for example abstain from energy drinks for a couple weeks, then restart from the lowest heroic dose, about one drink or one pill. You might get a week or more of colorful lucid dreams if you're lucky, but maybe just expect a strong first night and a few nights winding down.

[mikel]

Ooops...Barking at the wrong tree, Robert...!🙄🥴😂